Front corner clear !

I only seem to be able to do one picture at a time at the moment, so here's the one of the front corner, all nice and clear. This may not look much, but it actually took ages to get it out.
One other plus is that the brambles that used to predominate in this corner don't seem to be there for the moment, but let's not speak too soon.

Bad news for Angie, but good news for the garden, lots of worms around when we were digging.

Back from holidays

Good old Nathan ! All those hours in the gym weren't wasted when you can help with digging up those enormous stumps of shrubs that are just too heavy for most of us.
Grabbing a window of opportunity between work, rugby and the gym, he successfully managed to winkle out the two big stumps at the back and the small rather spiky one in the front corner.
This was inspired by some stalwart work from Ivan and Carol who have been back on the weeding patrol again, so the back wall and what will be the centre bed are now looking very respectable.

Big Day as the trellis goes up !

The two Michaels did the hard work while Penny and Miranda offered advice and electricity to ensure that the last part of our phase one was completed in time for the next meeting of the Community Council -just.

The trellis will be useful for climbers to help cover the back wall, and in joint agreement we decided to put up one large block in the centre and two smaller trellis panels on either side.
It's amazing that the wall has kept so free of graffiti given how much goes on generally in the borough, but i think people are now aware that the garden is being cared for, and no loner use it as a large bin, in the way they used to. Tons of weeds are coming through again, but at last the brambles seem to be giving up the fight against the Roundup, so hopefully we'll soon see the last of them.

The Wall

Mick is an absolute hero ! In what seemed like a matter of minutes he was up the ladder and filling the cracks and hey presto ! A beautiful new wall that is not only a lovely colour, but a brilliant background to the plants. One of the smelly bags of manure has been distributed around the garden, we still need to dig the second one in. The remaining two can wait in our front garden until we have plants to put in. Mick is getting the trellis, as the wall looks like an invitation to taggers and graffiti artists, so we'll need to get that up as soon as.

TV camera due today to have a look at our work so far.

Oops! Forgot the daffs !

Sorry about that, forgot to add the photo of the daffodils, the grape hyacinths were good with them, and matched the car as well. Since then Ivan has returned to the digging, and other exciting events have also taken place. They will be reported in the next posting. Over the weekend Angie, Miranda and Penny did a bit of muck spreading, as the soil is very poor and dry and we need to get some goodness into it. So far a bag of farmyard manure has been dug in, we have 3 more to go and plenty of digging still to do. Pleased to report that Angie wasn't attacked by any worms.

A little bit of springtime

The bulbs were lovely, especially the tulips at the back. Lots of people noticed, and happily there was a lot less litter once the flowers started to bloom.
The daffodils were a lovely mixture, and Malcolm's hasty planting scheme was a great success.
Ita came over from St Mary's, the community garden where she does voluntary work. She sketched us a lovely little plan and made suggestions for planting. Some of the plants we can buy at St Mary's, it's a lovely scheme where adults with learning difficulties or who are HIV positive go to garden. It would be really nice to link up with them.

Time to get started

Hurrah for the Community Council ! Hopefully most Church hill Gardeners will have got an e-mail saying that we have a grant for £750 from the Community Council to beautify our garden. I went to the community meeting at South Grove Primary School on Monday 26th February where the projects were voted upon.
Each resident was given 3 red stickers with their papers and asked to vote for the projects which were pinned up on the walls. Luckily I'm not a shy person, so when I realised that nobody knew us or knew about us, I just went up to anyone who looked friendly and said,
" Please vote for us, we're just a group of ordinary people in Church Hill Road....."
and basically I bored a few people into putting their stickers on our project. When they started adding up, I noticed that a man on my table hadn't bothered to vote at all, so I asked him to at least vote for us and the guy he was talking to agreed, so he did. It turned out the man's mate was the deputy leader of the council, so he probably did it to impress him rather than me.
Anyway, that one vote may have made all the difference, because we came third, and they had agreed to fund the first 3 projects.
So I've sent off the Bank details to Theresa at the council, and hopefully the money will soon be paid in.
Meanwhile...
Ita Keown, who works at St Mary's Community Garden in Hackney came over on Tuesday to measure up and suggest what we can do and how we can start. Ivan and Michael also came over and I wrote up her suggestions and posted them to everyone I have an e-mail address for.
I'll have a bash at getting them on the blog once I've spoken to Nathan about the best way of illustrating them.